


Devotion

by ElwritesFanworks



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Awkward Conversations, Bathing/Washing, Bodily Functions, Caregiving, Cleaning, Coma, Creepy Fluff, Devotion, Facial Shaving, Hospitals, Jealousy, M/M, Medical Procedures, Nervousness, Nurses & Nursing, One-Sided Attraction, One-Sided Relationship, Possessive Behavior, Protectiveness, Self-Indulgent, Spiders, The Web - Freeform, Voyeurism, creepy to fluffy ratio will vary from reader to reader, depends how you feel about... things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-31
Updated: 2019-01-31
Packaged: 2019-10-19 23:51:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17611433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElwritesFanworks/pseuds/ElwritesFanworks
Summary: Martin isn't happy Jon's in a coma, but he is happy that he gets to care for him.A self-indulgent little Martin-centric oneshot concerning coma!Jon. Martin isn't quite Web!Martin, yet (or is he?) but there's certainly a lot (too much) of spider imagery.





	Devotion

**Author's Note:**

> Where to begin with this? Idk it's an idea I had... I decided to type it up. I have a kind of weird... I dunno if you can call it a kink as much as an affinity for caregiving for sick loved ones as a trope. Like providing basic first aid, comfort care, sanitary help, etc. I have no idea what that would really be called, but it is something I really, really enjoy. Probably because I wouldn't do that sort of care for anybody unless they were the love of my life. Otherwise I'd hire somebody because germs creep me out. But I love the idea of loving someone enough you intentionally expose yourself to their germs. 
> 
> Idk if this is even good. I haven't slept in days and am very depressed, so this is mostly just a thing to write for the sake of doing something. If anyone enjoys it, that's cool too. I went aggressively un-subtle with the spider imagery. It's probably too much, but ehhhh...

* * *

Martin has spent enough time in hospitals to know that people react in various ways when confronted with the grim reality of placing a loved one in long-term care. Some get short-tempered, seeing every unwashed pillowslip or tepid glass of water as a glaring sign of neglect and abuse. Others take a gentler approach, recognizing the difference between intentional malpractice and a workforce spread too thin, and try to lighten the load when they can. Even before his mother’s decline, Martin had been the second type of person – non-confrontational, diplomatic. Cooperation means he can maintain some order, some control over the chaos of his everyday life. There are precious few moments in which Martin feels like he is properly in charge, but he’s good at taking care of people. It’s easy to snatch the attention of a nurse and be decent to them. Decency is enough, what with how some people treat them. He always feels for the care staff when he hears somebody barking orders at them like a slave-driver, all to appease their own guilt of only coming to visit Mum or Dad once a year. Martin likes to think he’d be kind even if it didn’t get him anywhere. He keeps helping with small things and picking up advice along the way. It’s why he knows how to turn someone to prevent bedsores, to keep their feet angled so their tendons don’t stretch too much while convalescing in a sickbed, to safely lift a patient from a wheelchair to a mattress. He’s taken it all in first-hand, watching, then assisting, so that when his mother couldn’t stomach plain water, he knew to give juice instead to help make the medication go down easy. The little things make all the difference. It’s intuitive at this point. He’s been changing diapers and inserting catheters and giving sponge baths for years. He knows how to talk to someone when they’re terrified and confused, their mind half gone. He’s always liked to be needed, liked to be useful. For a man so plain and ordinary, empathy is the one thing he has in spades.

Jon being in a coma makes him feel a bit… glad, to be honest. Not glad that Jon is suffering, of course – never that – but glad that he can’t scuttle away and out of sight, into danger, where Martin cannot follow. He likes how Jon is finally resting, letting his body heal properly, and he likes lurking in the room during visiting hours, making sure nothing unnatural comes too close. One of the nurses tells him he can watch television in a room down the hall if he wants to break up the day a bit, and he thanks her, but knows he won’t need it. He has all the entertainment he needs watching the light from the window move over Jon’s still features as the hours pass. He notes new things every day, writes poems about them, even. When the sun is in the right place, Jon’s eyelashes catch the light and a yellowy-brown undertone shines in them, brassy and bright. The silver in his hair shines too, and his gaunt cheeks are cast in shadow. His chest rises and falls in a slow, steady rhythm, and the longer Martin watches, entranced, he finds his breathing matching that same pace. It’s peaceful, quiet, calm. Martin’s made sure of that – just as he’s sure there are always fresh flowers in the room, and natural light, and that any loud or unpleasant people are given a stern look or even a pointed ‘excuse me,’ until they take the message and leave.

Jon’s bedside has become his favourite place to be.

He happens to pop in to visit Jon just as a nurse is getting to him, frazzled, pulling a face. He knows even before the smell hits him that someone hasn’t situated all the pads and linings right for when Jon soils himself. He’d have expected them to use diapers, really – and puts this up to cut corners. He feels irritation – he’s not immune to that – when he sees the look in the woman’s eyes, because Jon shouldn’t be looked at like that – not by anyone, not like he’s a burden just because he’s sick or hurt or dirty. Martin is practiced in squashing the anger, though, and in its place attempting to be nice.

“Hi,” he chirps, catching the nurse off-guard. He sets the new bunch of flowers beside their wilted cousins in the plastic vase he’s set up on the bedside table. “I can help lift him if you like.”

“Sorry, who are you?” the nurse asks. She sounds both weary and cross. If it wasn’t Jon he was here to see, it might have been enough to scare Martin off, but the idea of someone else tending to him, poking at him, judging him, makes something between possessiveness and loyalty flare in his chest.

“I’m a friend of Jon’s. I also spent years as my mother’s carer. She was bedbound a lot, and the doctors had her on stool softeners. I learned how to clean someone up when I was a teenager. It’s not what I hoped to be doing when I got here today, but I don’t want him sitting in that until an orderly can get here. Let me help lift him, at least.”

She blinks at him.

“I really shouldn’t let you,” she says flatly. “It’s against protocol.”

“I know,” Martin nods, “and I understand if you can’t make an exception. But if you could, know that I’m willing and happy to help. He’s very dear to me, and I know he’d do the same for me, if I was the one in a coma.”

That, of course, isn’t even close to the truth, but Martin is almost as good at lying as he is at being helpful. She falls for it – he can tell, even before she speaks.

“We’re short-staffed as it is…”

“Tell me where clean linens are and I’ll get them,” Martin offers simply. She nods once, quickly, in response.

The nurse is called away when the bed’s been stripped and Jon is only half through being cleaned.

“I’ve got it,” Martin insists, trying not to look thrilled. “I promise.”

He does, too – puts on a pair of large-size disposable gloves and takes to his task with a handful of wipes. He’s meticulous because he has to be – no sense being unhygienic. There’s nothing sexy about it; it’s not the way he’d have liked to see Jon naked, if he ever got the privilege. Still, it is a privilege, nonetheless, to have him at his mercy, to be cared for and tended to and fussed over. He can’t help but look at him as he cleans, can’t help but commit it to memory, his velvet-soft balls hanging low and relaxed as he sleeps, darker than the surrounding skin, a bruised plum colour, and perfect. His flaccid prick, uncut, the pink head just peeping out from under the tan foreskin. Jon’s penis rests a little to the left, Martin notes, while his own prefers to be kept to the right. He has a lot of pubic hair, unkempt and messy, long, mouse brown and slate grey. Martin expects nothing else from his boss – the full, natural bush is so distinctly Jon that he smiles a bit to himself, almost giddy. Is this what it feels like, to truly behold? He could look at Jon for an eternity and never tire of it. The nurse didn’t see, oblivious to the beauty right in front of her. He can’t be sad about that; he can’t stomach the thought of her peering at Jon’s scars and wondering how he got them or noticing how pale he is from so long spent indoors or seeing how thin he’s gotten in the last few months, so really, he’s grateful to have control over the situation.

“You don’t take good enough care of yourself,” he says softly. “I wish you would. We all need you, you know. We miss you. We’re still… functional, right now, but it’s not… it’s very close to unbearable, sometimes. Especially with Tim and Daisy gone, and… well. It’s just. We can’t have you fading away from us.”

He lifts Jon’s legs a bit for easier access, wiping him down with the gentlest touch he can manage. There’s so little meat to work with – Jon’s so thin and bony – that cleanup goes quickly, but Martin lingers to pat everything dry with a clean, soft cloth.

“There you are,” he coos adoringly, “Good as new!”

He fetches a new paper gown and gets him dressed. Once Jon is clean, dry, and clothed (inasmuch as a gown counts as clothes) Martin carefully lays him back in bed and tucks him in securely. He rather likes tucking Jon in – perhaps a little tightly, but he doesn’t like the thought of him rolling away. Coma patients don’t generally roll anywhere as a rule, but you can never be too careful, he reasons. No, better to have him be safe and warm and bundled up.

“Snug as a bug in a web,” he murmurs to himself, then shakes his head. “Rug, I mean. Must be working too hard. I’m all muddled today.”

He glances up at Jon, imagining his retort if only he could currently reply.

“I _have_ been working – I know you think I’m rubbish and you may be right but I put in my hours same as everyone else does. More now you’re not there. I don’t like leaving things where I can’t see them – overtime’s fine when you’ve not got much of a social life to speak of. Anyway… you want some water? Your lips look dry. Not that I’m looking at – I mean your mouth’s part of your face. I can’t _not_ see – I’ll get some water. For want of a cup of tea, it’ll have to do. I don’t suppose they have you on anything with caffeine, anyway.”

He allowed himself to touch Jon’s shoulder gently and resists an instinctive urge to press a kiss to his boss’s brow. That would be inappropriate, not to mention an invasion of personal space that Jon would have no way of consenting to. Unnecessary contact is a dangerous spiral of its – he shudders – is like opening a can of worm–

“We need new turns of phrase,” he grimaces. “Oh well. Never you mind – I’ll only be a minute.”

He leaves. Comes back with a cup of water, a cotton ball, and a pack of chocolate-covered dried fruit for himself. He hasn’t eaten in hours – he hasn’t had much appetite, really, and his vision’s starting to swim.

“See? Back in the blink of an eye. Here we are, let me help you.”

He soaks the cotton and passes it gently over Jon’s lips. He watches his chest slowly rising and falling and eats his chocolate, standing awkwardly beside the head of the bed.

“D’you like these things?” he muses, “not that you can have any now, of course. Just. I’m not sure how I feel about them. The pineapple bits are alright. Not sure about the orange things though.” He flips the bag over, studies it. “Papaya. Huh. Tastes a bit… I dunno really. Funny, I suppose. Maybe I’m just not used to it. Dunno, really. I just grabbed the first thing that looked edible – I didn’t like to leave you alone too long.”

He gives Jon some more water.

“You could do with a shave,” he murmurs. “Not that you don’t look good with a bit of scruff on, but I can’t imagine you’d be caught dead looking this… rugged. I know – I’ll see what I can rustle up. You just stay put.”

Hospitals, he thinks, following one long corridor to its end, are a lot like starfish. All arms and branches off of arms. Not starfish really – they don’t have enough limbs. Maybe like a really complicated sort of network of converging points, like the things they used to draw in English when he was in school. Plot the characters’ motivations on a… bubble chart? No. No – a story web, that was it, wasn’t it? He’d had to do one for Hamlet, each branch leading to a different person – Laertes, Polonius, the ghost. He tells Jon about it when he returns with a disposable shaving kit.

“Personally, I always felt like Horatio was the unsung hero of the whole thing. Suppose he was sort of sung, I guess. Just… he cared so much for Hamlet – for making sure he was well. It always struck me as beautiful, in a sad sort of way. Kind of romantic, to tell you the truth, minus, y’know. The whole dying bit.”

He begins lathering up while talking. He looks over and smiles.

“Alright, I’m gonna put this on. Sorry – it’s a bit cold. There we go. Great.”

He shaves that beloved face with care, tenderly manipulating Jon’s face this way and that. It’s a slow process, slower than it has to be really, but on some level, Martin wants to savour it – this intimacy.

“You’ll look more like yourself in a minute. It’s strange, seeing you in a gown and bed, all white sheets and hard, industrial pillows. They don’t look comfortable, I’ll be honest. Like a pair of cloth-covered bricks. Honestly, I know they do their best, but you’d think that a hospital would allocate at least a little money to bedding that doesn’t hurt to lie on. Your neck must be stiff as a board.”

He rinsed the razor in a paper cup he’d filled with water and began to work on Jon’s throat.

“Pity about this angle, really. If I could reach your neck maybe I could help. I’m good at massages – I mean, I’ve been told that. A few of my mother’s friends used to ask me to work on their shoulders or hands when they’d come over to visit. I’ve never taken classes or anything – I just have a sort of sense for when things aren’t right. I wish it worked on me, to be honest. When I was sleeping at the archives I had the worst ache in my lower back from sleeping on that mattress. I couldn’t reach it to do anything about it and it was just awful. There – face’s done. Let me just wipe your face…”

He hums to himself as he works, dabbing at Jon’s skin in small, careful motions.

“They say coma patients can hear, sometimes. I sort of hope you can’t. I’m sorry I keep talking. I don’t mean to be a bore. It’s just. It’s difficult, really. I get so… nervous, when it’s quiet. Like I can feel things… unraveling. When I’m spinning a story or reaching for some memory or other, I know what I’m doing and I feel like I’ve sort of got you stuck in conversation – even if it is one-sided. I know you won’t wriggle away. I feel sick, you know, when I’m not here. I don’t sleep well. It’s as though I can feel… movement? Pressure? Encroaching on you. Muscling in. I don’t like it. I want you safe, where I can get you. I know how long it takes me to get here from my flat – I can follow the lines of the streets from my room to your room – but I’m so tired. I don’t like to sleep because… what if you need me? What if I miss it? But it doesn’t do to go without any rest at all…”

He shakes his head. He feels dizzy. There’s a strange coppery taste in his mouth.

“Don’t listen to me. _Please._ Just… have good dreams. Peaceful ones.”

Martin feels a bit ill. He hopes he isn’t coming down with something – he needs to be well enough to maintain his vigil. He buys some juice and tries to read a magazine, but he can’t concentrate. He feels itchy. A nurse passes by in the hallway and his skin prickles – he doesn’t know why, but he doesn’t want her coming in. He doesn’t want anyone coming in. He’s just got Jon settled, now, and it’s perfect the way it is, everything just so. He doesn’t need someone knocking through it like a – like a broom through a cobweb – just rending everything to bits.

_This stillness is mine. I made it for **him.** They’ll ruin it –_

But of course, that’s foolishness. The nurse needs to come in to give Jon some sedatives – and as soon as she crosses the threshold, it’s like Martin’s awake, a sudden burst of energy clearing his mind. She’s a different nurse to the sour one from before – younger, and fresh-faced. She smiles toothily at him.

“You need to go home, love.”

“I can’t – he needs me.”

“If he loves you half as much as you love him, he’ll not want you wearing yourself ragged. What sort’ve a boyfriend would you be if you got sick because you didn’t take care of yourself?”

“I…” he finds he’s too tired to correct her. “I don’t know if –”

“He’ll be in safe hands,” she says gently. “Pairs and pairs of hands. There’s lots of us here to look after him.”

“You’re not understaffed?”

She laughs at that.

“We’ll manage.”

He thinks about it. Something in her words is comforting. Hands and hands and hands for Jon, holding him, cradling him, treating him while Martin is away.

“Alright,” he says at last. “I… suppose. Yes. I’ll go for now.”

“You can come back tomorrow,” she nods. “And he’ll be so glad of the company.”

Martin hopes so. He feels weirdly unfaithful as he walks out of that room and down the hall to the lift. He steps into it with a sigh. He’s alone – he has no reason to hide the sadness on his face.

_He’ll be looked after._

The thought sneaks up on his tired brain, almost as though it wasn’t his own, which is a testament to how slowly his mental processes are moving. He blinks, and when he opens his eyes, catches sight of something in his peripheral vision. He turns to look and smiles wide. A spider – just a small one – lurking out of reach in the upper right corner, by the ceiling.

“I’m being very silly, aren’t I?” he smiles. “Jon will be okay… you’ll look after him, won’t you?”

It’s foolish – a schoolboy game – to imagine the spider saying yes, but the imagined encounter of its tiny, many-eyed head nodding, makes Martin laugh until he’s breathless. He hasn’t laughed like that in… in a long time. Longer than he can remember, really. He’s still chuckling when he steps off the lift at the ground floor and begins navigating his way around various sick people, loved ones, and medical staff to get to the main doors. He’ll go home and have a sleep. Jon will be safe and sound, wrapped up in his blankets. Martin will return to him later, just as soon as he can.


End file.
